October 22, 2016

Half of Dems, too, would view Clinton as illegitimate, after rigged primary

Lost in the discussions about how Trump and his voters would respond to electoral fraud in the general election that appeared to indicate a win for Crooked Hillary, is how Democrats themselves would respond.

During the last hotly contested election in 2000, it was only one side vs. the other. Gore voters said Bush was "selected, not elected," "Hail to the Thief," and so on. But there was no dissent within the Republican camp, in particular not from those who voted for Bush's primary opponent John McCain. It was not a bitterly fought primary, and whatever minor wounds there were had healed by the general.

After a hypothetical Clinton win, however, half of her own party would be joining in with the other party in viewing her as illegitimate, and for similar reasons relating to "the rigged system".

There never really has been a healing process among Democrats since the primaries heated up last fall/winter during debate season. The contests themselves were fairly even in the popular vote, with Sanders getting somewhere between 45-50% of voters. By contrast, Trump smashed his nearest competitor in the popular vote, 45% to 25% in a field of many more candidates.

Because the Democrat battles were more evenly decided, it made the losers not feel like such losers, hence less inclined to concede and rally around the winner. Those who voted for Cruz or Rubio on the GOP side had to face the facts that they were vastly outnumbered and had no real leverage to stage a delegate revolt, bolt the party, or otherwise keep the battle going after the primaries were over.

The Bernie people were the victims of all sorts of attempts to rig the result in Crooked Hillary's favor -- most flagrantly, her having the superdelegates in her pocket from the outset (and you can only win the nomination without the superdelegates if you annihilate your opponent with nearly 70% of the popular vote).

Even sticking to just the popular vote, the media was conspiring against Bernie and in favor of Hillary the whole time, there were accusations of electoral fraud in the all-important primaries in New York and California (and Arizona), the debates were staged to hide her from public view, and we now know she was fed at least one and probably more questions to the debate by someone who was both a commentator at the network and a superdelegate for Clinton (Donna Brazile).

As the DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks leading up to the national Convention, the fresh wounds were torn farther open. There were massive protests by Democrats outside their own Convention, and more disturbingly a loud and visible revolt by Bernie delegates on the floor of the Convention. Bernie himself got booed by his own supporters when he gave a speech that included a line about having to help elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

Tensions subsided temporarily, until Hillary collapsed and had her lifeless half-corpse dragged into the car on 9/11. That gave the Bernie people another focal point for returning to the battle lines -- "Gee, wouldn't it be great if the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn't already dead?!"

And now that WikiLeaks is releasing the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, it's rubbing more salt in the Bernie people's wounds than even the DNC leaks. Since the DNC is a lesser entity to Clinton world, they didn't have too powerful of a role in rigging the primary against Bernie. Far more of those efforts were orchestrated by Clinton world and its campaign -- particularly the collusion with the media and so-called progressive think tanks.

With the Bernie voters continuing at this late date to sift through Clinton-related emails for signs of foul play, it cannot be overstated how deep the sense of a rigged primary election goes with them.

Nor will this end if even more damning emails are released, perhaps including the 30,000 that Hillary's top aides believed they had deleted without a trace. If a mainstream audience would be outraged by them, you can imagine how the Bernie voters will be howling for blood.

Of course, half of the Democrats would not be happy with a Trump presidency, but they could not blame it on a rigged system -- he overcame his own rigged primary, and would go on to win despite all the electoral malfeasance by the Clinton campaign.

But if the initial results suggested a win for Clinton, half the Democrats would view her as having only won by rigging the process. In that case, they would view Bernie as the rightful winner -- he should have won the primary, if it had been fair, and if Trump lost the general, then whoever is the rightful winner of the Democrat primary ought to be the winner of the general.

In a hypothetical scenario where Clinton was the apparent President-Elect, not only would she be viewed as illegitimate by half the country, who support her general opponent, but by a further one-quarter of the country, who support her primary opponent. It would be guaranteed that massive civil disobedience would break out if 75% of the country thought she rigged her way into the presidency, and that this was a bipartisan sentiment.

And there would be no worse sign of governability problems than massive demonstrations throughout the country where both Bernie Democrats and the Republicans were taking part. Presumably they would agree to a truce between themselves, and perhaps put it up to a popular vote between Bernie and Trump. The Bernie crowd have been convinced for months and months that Bernie was more electable than Clinton against Trump -- let's put that idea to a test! (Trump would crush, but they are too trusting of "favorability" polls, which also suggested that Kasich was the strongest Republican candidate -- LOL.)

The historical models (Norpoth, Lichtman) and the most accurate polls (IBD, USC) show that Trump is going to win. The point of going through these hypotheticals is to try to raise awareness of just how much civil unrest, anarchy, and prolonged violence would result if the Establishment tried to steal the election for Crooked Hillary at the last moment here. She would only have her primary voters "backing" her, who are not enthusiastic about her anyway -- compared to two angry and highly motivated mobs that she screwed over during the primary and then the general elections.

3 comments:

The timing of the Wikileaks is good when Berniebros/brocialists are tempted to vote the party line, swallow their pride, and vote for Hillary. These leaks have an appreciable effect and will keep more than a few from voting for her.

In 2008, Obama won the 18-29 vote 66-31 if this site is to be believed: http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2008/. In the LA Times poll for yesterday, Hillary is leading by just 42-39 with 18-34 voters. At multiple times in the poll, Trump was leading with young voters. It is just considered a given that young people want to vote Democrat and for this election to be the first time where it is a virtual tie or even a slight Republican edge, that is a big deal.